21 April 2014

Stories from 21 April 2014

Grenada, Antigua: Life Lessons

  21 April 2014

Kara Stevens, blogging at Groundation Grenada, shares five lessons about finances and life from Lessons her “Superhero Antiguan Grandpa”.

Caribbean: The Writing & Politics of Gabriel García Márquez

  21 April 2014

The literary fraternity is only just starting to adjust to the idea of life without “Gabo” – the inimitable Colombian-born author who was beloved by the world – Gabriel García Márquez, who passed away last Thursday in Mexico City. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, García Márquez left...

International Organizations, Activists and Authors Against #LeyTelecom

  21 April 2014

Several digital rights international organizations sent the Mexican Congress a letter expressing international support [es] for the defense of the freedom of expression and Internet freedom in Mexico. The letter is signed by Electronic Frontier Foundation, Vía Libre, Digital Rights NGO, among other academics and experts. According to the signers,...

Jamaica Names Poet Laureate

  21 April 2014

Jamaican diaspora litblogger Geoffrey Philp is thrilled to hear that Mervyn Morris has been named Poet Laureate of Jamaica by the country's National Library, saying: It speaks to the years of commitment to his craft and the guidance that he has given and continues to give to poets and to...

French Economist Piketty Links Inequality to Instability of Democracies

  21 April 2014

French economist and Associate Chair at the Paris School of Economics, Thomas Piketty recently published a book called “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” that has generated quite a buzz among fellow economists and political leaders. Piketty's central thesis is that inequality is not an accident, but one of the consequences of the excess of capitalism. Piketty...

East Timorese Protect Land Rights Against Australian Cement Plant Deal

  21 April 2014

The announcement of a new cement plant project by an Australian company in Baucau, northeast of East Timor, has led local community groups to set up a non-governmental organization “to protect and preserve the communities’ rights to their culture, development and traditional land rights.” According to the community organization, Kapeliwa, the government...

Will there be a Popular Consultation for Yasuní?

  21 April 2014

(All links are in Spanish, otherwise noted as [en] for English) Following the president's decision last year to exploit the oil fields in Parque Nacional Yasuní [en] [Yasuní National Park] an oppositional movement began and became quickly organized. It started carrying out marches for collecting signatures in order to hold a popular consultation regarding...